Seems like so long ago
Living in Pennsylvania and only a few hours from Punxsutawney, home of the famous groundhog Phil and “back drop” for one of the top 5 most boring movies of all time (the real town used in the film was Woodstock, IL), a lot is made of Groundhog Day. This year Phil got everyone all excited that spring would be coming early this year, however it looks like he attended the same meteorological school as the rest of the weatherman in Pittsburgh, because it has been far from an early spring. We had snow last weekend and were supposed to get more today and tomorrow, however the temperature inched just above freezing so we have nothing but rain.
It seems like last summer was so long ago in a whole other world after the past six months of weather. We’ve had huge snow storms, torrential down pours, one nice day followed by a week of clouds. I’ve found myself looking back on the pictures that I took in July and August last year, spending time on a friend’s boat, having a few beers and trying my hand (somewhat) successfully at wakeboarding. There is something about being out in the middle of the Ohio River, with the city out of sight around the bends and corners that is just so relaxing. The above shot is from one of those days, when I was waiting for some friends to show up and I was just sitting on the dock, listening to the breeze rustle the leaves, not even thinking about winter. I can’t wait for those days to be back!
I will be posting both of the shots you see here on flickr today, but since it is still pouring down rain this morning I figured I would start with this one. This is one that I took a few weeks ago at a bar in downtown Pittsburgh before the Elton John concert on a night that we were seeing golf ball size hail. I actually saw a woman come into the bar with a bruised knuckle because she was hit with a falling missile, crazy. Pretty simple processing on this shot from my S95; increased both the contrast and saturation, as well as added a Contrast Only filter in Color Efex. In iPhoto I also increased the definition, just to give it some extra pop.
Last Pens home game tonight. Let’s make it two in a row against the Devils at home.
What legends are made of
Yeah, I know, I know, I missed a post yesterday. We have been a bit busy at work lately, as we are moving to a new building, and we are currently the last ones in the old building, so there is a lot to get done. Back on the wagon today.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Elton John concert at the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh. Now, I am a huge classic rock fan, and while I do enjoy Elton’s music, he wouldn’t be in my top 10 of favorite musicians, but let me say this: It was awesome. I mean, he really rocked the stage, it was incredible to watch him play, overall an immensely entertaining show. He kept the crowd engaged, standing up and acknowledging all four sides of the stage after every song and even took the time to sign autographs before his encore, probably about fifty or so people that he let come up and stand by the stage for his last few songs, which included Bennie and the Jets and Crocodile Rock, along with his encore of Your Song. Shots from this concert were taken with a Canon S95.
Tried out the Tilt Shift function on this one
I did find the concert very enjoyable…except for the eight songs that he did with Leon Russell right in the middle of the show. I know that Russell is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, but it just really seemed to detract from the energetic vibe of the rest of the show. The songs were slow, very few people knew them, as they were from the collaborative new album between Elton and Russell. Other than that, awesome show.
Back in August, on opening night of the CONSOL Energy Center, before any hockey game had been played, I was in attendance to see former Beatle Paul McCartney. In regards to entertainment, Sir Paul most definitely put on the best show I have ever been to. It also helped that I knew the majority of the songs played and could sing along (not that anyone would want to hear that), but being able to see a legend like McCartney, that is a once in a lifetime thing, at least at this point in his career. For this concert I had my Canon S90.
Finally, last March we attended an Eric Clapton concert at the old Civic Arena. I know that I just said McCartney put on the best show ever, but Clapton’s music was just mesmerizing. When they showed his hands making that guitar sing like it wasn’t anything at all was truly something special. Clapton is not the same kind of entertainer as Elton and Paul, but he put on one hell of a show and I would gladly go back to see him again. Didn’t have a great camera with my this time though, so just iPhone shots for this one.
I am very fortunate that I was able to see three of the great rock/pop musicians of our time in my hometown. I don’t go to many concerts, but when I do, I make it worthwhile.
Speaking of these Pittsburgh hockey arenas and to go along with the nighttime Pittsburgh skyline, here is a shot of both. I took this a few weeks into the season form the upper parking lot above the Civic Arena and had to hold up a lot of traffic to do so. People honking, yelling, screaming while I just threw up my hands and said, “It’s bracketing nine exposures at night, it takes a lot time, what do you want me to do?” One way to shut people up is just to confuse them!
Tomorrow’s Friday. Woo hoo.
Down by the river
A few days ago I did a write up on all the sports arenas in Pittsburgh, both past and present. Well, maybe not all of them, but all of the significant ones. Yesterday there was some pretty big news in Pittsburgh around perhaps the most iconic one, Mellon Arena. As we know, the Penguins moved out of the Igloo this season and across the street into the new CONSOL Energy Center. The decision was made last October to have the old Civic Arena torn down, and a new development put in, with shops, apartments, etc. It was going to be designed to help reconnect the city to the Hill District, as the home of Penguins had separated the two for nearly fifty years. The demolition was scheduled for early 2011.
But here we are early March 2011 and the arena is still standing, as we saw in my upload from a few days back. That’s because right after the decision to implode the arena was made, historical organizations began fighting for the preservation of the building, claiming that it was a cultural landmark and should be saved. My two cents on the whole issue is this. It is an old building. Inside? Pretty ugly. Cool, but ugly. It’s small, cramped, and not a whole lot to use it for. Besides, even if they did want to use it for concerts, shows and the like, why would anyone want to perform in a fifty year old building when they can perform at a less than one year old building across the street? I’m not even taking into consideration what it would take to keep the Civic Arena operational and safe for patrons, but I have to imagine it would be astronomical.
My opinions aside, the historical societies were dealt a blow yesterday, when the Pittsburgh Historic Review panel denied the Civic Arena’s status as a city historic structure. Although the preservations will eventually take the battle to the city council, which will have the final say, it is not looking too good for the world’s first retractable domed stadium.
On to today’s shots. Well, technically I only have one shot to post to flickr, but I was up on Mt. Washington shooting and killing time yesterday, and got a pretty cool tilt shift with Canon S95 that I wanted to share first. I haven’t processed a tilt shift in Photoshop for a while, but I may see what I can dig up. For now though, I am pretty happy with the effect provided by the S95.
Today’s official shot it another one from a few Saturdays ago. After I made my way across the Ft. Duquesne Bridge, the moon was still just above the horizon. All the tones seemed to blend together so nicely, even the reds and the blues. There was a perfect gradient in the sky that matched the color of the building, and the blue right along top of the sky even seemed to match the water. I set up the tripod, took the bracket of seven shots, and made my way towards PNC Park.
Processed this one pretty similar to the other ones in the set. The bracketed shots were put through HDR Efex using the HDR Method “Soft”. I masked in the -3 exposure, to make sure that I got that rich color gradient fading from red to blue. I added a blue curves layer to enhance the upper park of the sky and also masked in the light post you see on the right as it was just a little blown out. Added a Tonal Contrast filter from Color Efex and High Pass Sharpening, as usual. Finally, adjusted the overall curves of the scene to give it a bit more contrast, saved and uploaded.
Ahhh, can you smell that? Friday is in the air. Enjoy your day guys.
A flash of brilliance
I really can’t help but at least talk about the Pens for a little bit after a game. Although they lost again last night, which is getting to be a common theme with the rash of injuries they’ve had, there were some sparks in the lineup that certainly give you some optimism. Tyler Kennedy, on a bit of a tear as of late, scored two goals, and Marc Andre Fleury looked absolutely brilliant in the loss. The goals, a one timer from behind the net on a power play, a bad bounce that game right to a Shark who jammed it home, and a scrum in front of the net with Fleury down, can be easily forgiven. The offense has to get going though, averaging only 2 goals a game since the departure of Sidney Crosby, last in league by a long shot. I’m not giving up on the season yet. Let’s go Pens.
Some shots from the game last night. The first one is a thirty image panorama that I took with the iPhone and stitched with AutoStitch. I think that it game out pretty cool. The second one is a tilt shift that I took with the S95, as that is a custom scene on the phone. Also not too shabby.
30 image panorama
Canon S95 Tilt Shift
Like I said a few days ago, I was finally able to get out shooting this weekend. Got up real early on Saturday at 6, grabbed the gear, and rolled out downtown. I had this vision of the sunrise coming up over the city and me standing at the Point, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio. However, I got downtown, which was eerily empty, seeing as it was 6:30 on a Saturday morning, and realized that that just wasn’t going to work. There are still doing construction at the Point, and it really detracted from the picture. Ok, on to Plan B. I headed over the Fort Duquesne Bridge towards Heinz Field, and the view down the river was stunning. The moon was huge in the sky, the colors were all kinds of shades of pastels and the water was nice and calm in the river. Got a few shots, then headed over my destination, right below the Clemente Bridge. Set up the tripod, snapped a few pre sunrise shots and waited. I saw the sun starting to come and thought, “It has to peak around the buildings soon.” I look behind me, and see it is already shining on the building that I was standing in front of. So I back up 10 feet, and lo and behold, there is the sun, streaming through the Rachel Carson Bridge. “Um yeah, I’ll take an order of sun flares, no thanks, no halos for me today.”
This is a seven exposure HDR processed under the Clean setting on HDR Efex. After cleaning up all the dust spots in the sky (yes I forget to clean the sensor before I went out. Come on, it was 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Gimme a break.) I could go to work. First, I selected the tree and recovered some of the shadows on it. I wanted it to be silhouetted, just not as much as it was. I added a green curves level to enhance the grass and the bushes, as well as did selective coloring to give the sun a more reddish tint, as it was a bit too yellow for my liking. Kicked it over the Color Efex where I added a Tonal Contrast layer on everything but the sky, and finally added some High Park Sharpening. I really like the result, one of my favorite shots that haven’t been from New York in a while.
That about wraps it up for today. One more day til Friday.
A bitter night
One of the great things about living in western Pennsylvania is that we have four very distinct seasons. Unlike a lot of the northern or southern states where it either states cold or warm for most of the year, we see a gradual transition from winter to spring to summer to fall. We get to experience a white Christmas, flowers blooming, barbeques and fireworks and beautiful fall foliage that is painted throughout the region. However, one of the worst things about living in western Pennsylvania is that we have four very distinct seasons. Summer and fall I’m more or less okay with, it’s just the end of winter/beginning of spring that really get me. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow as much as the next guy, but when it dumps eight inches during rush hour on a Monday night in late February, that I can do without. It’s not so much all the snow we got, but the fact that yesterday morning it started out as a torrential downpour of rain. Then, eleven hours later, we have a little blizzard that locks up most of the city.
There is something eerily calm about the snow. I spent the better part of two hours last night unburying both my driveway and a few of my neighbors and when the wind died down it was a very serene mood. The street lamps were glowing warm light that was being diffused by the falling snow, there wasn’t anyone on the road and it was just quiet. You could not tell where one person’s yard ended and another began. You couldn’t even tell where the yard ended and the street began. A plow truck hadn’t been through in over an hour, so the road was completely covered again. I found myself just standing there, with ice forwards on my hair and gloves, taking it all in. And for as much as I do not really like to spent until midnight shoveling and being freezing cold, it was oddly peaceful.
Some shots from the storm, all taken with the S95.
View down my street
Before shoveling
Front walkway
Shoveled path in HDR
Now to completely switch gears. Yesterday’s post was all about the Winter Classic and the matchup between the Penguins and the Capitals. Well, the Pens lost (title reference #2), in a hard fought, 1-0 game. I can’t be too upset, as the goalie for the Capitals, Michal Neuvirth, played an outstanding game. Since I talked hockey, I didn’t get a chance to post my picture from flickr. I’ll make up for that today, since they are the same subject. Heading back to New York. On the Friday we were we spent a lot of time doing some of the touristy things, like Grand Central, Central Park, FAO Schwartz and the New York Public Library. I hadn’t planned on stopping at the library, but since we were so close and we hadn’t been there before, I thought that it would be worth a quick peak. We made one lap around and then headed on our way.
The first shot is the front of the library. It was a bit of a pain to process because of all the people walking around in front. I just wish for one second I could get everyone to stand still so I could take the picture. I think for all the HDR photographers out there, we should be given a remote to stop people as we please. Just a thought. Anyways, it is a five shot handheld HDR, and HDR Efex did a decent job of cutting down the ghosting. I had to tonemap the +1 image to mask in all the people, and I also did a 100% mask of the -2 exposure for the sky. Desaturated the reds a bit, added a blue curves layer to the sky and applied a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex. Lastly did some high pass sharpening.
For today’s flickr post, we have one of the hall ways inside the library. Same issue with the ghosts here. Five exposure handheld, tonemapped the the +2 image for the people and masked them in. Then I tonemapped the -2 and masked in the window at the back of the scene, as I was metered on the shadows and the window was very blown out. Added a slight blur around the edge of the frame to put the focus on the center and finally added a Tonal Contrast filter.
That’s all for today my friends. See you tomorrow.
A Classic rematch
Heinz Field the day after the Classic
Usually coming up with a title is one of the more difficult parts of writing these blog entries, but today was easier than most. If you stopped by on Friday, you read that this evening will be a rematch between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals at CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh. This is not the first time the two teams have played since that cold, rainy New Year’s Day game, but it’s the first time the Caps have been back in town since then. The make up of the Pens is vastly different this time around, with the ranks still being depleted by injuries. It’s going to be a good show none the less, as it is always is when two rivals face off.
Rivalries are one of the best things about sports. Of course every fan dreams about their team winning a championship, as that is the ultimate prize for any league. Individual player awards are nice, but they don’t do a whole lot for the fans. Rivalries though, that is what really gives sports that edge, that intensity, that can’t miss game appeal. It’s amazing how rivalries in games can transcend into the culture of an entire city. Take my hometown, Pittsburgh and their football team the Steelers (notice I said their, not our) and one of their most hated rivals, the Cleveland Browns. The competition between the two teams has spread from the football field and into the streets of the cities, with Cleveland being called “The Mistake on the Lake”, t shirts that say “The only sign of intelligence in Cleveland is ‘Pittsburgh – 170 miles’”, and general ridicule for all things Cleveland. It doesn’t really help that the Browns haven’t been able to really field a competitive football team in years, but I think if they had, it would only fuel the rivalry further.
There will also always be those classic rivalries, like Lakers-Celtics in the NBA, Yankees-Red Sox in baseball, Packers-Vikings in the NFL and Duke-North Carolina in college basketball. But it can be really exciting to watch rivalries grow, like the one between the Pens and Capitals. Sure they have been Eastern (or Wales back in the old days) Conference competitors for decades, but with the emergence of Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin as the two best players in the world, it has taken the feud to an all new level and makes them the most exciting two teams to watch in the league, especially when they play each other. No matter what happens with for the rest of their careers, Sid and Ovechkin have left their mark on these franchises that will last a lifetime.
On to the shots. I won’t be going through the processing on these, just wanted to share a few sights from the 2011 Winter Classic. Check out the caption below each for the description. You’ll have to excuse the quality on the close ups of Sid, Geno and Ovechkin. We weren’t allowed to bring in big cameras, so I had the S95 at full zoom, which doesn’t giving the most crisp shots. The other in game action shots were taken with it as well, and they turned out great.
Opening faceoff
Puck behind the net
More board play
Sid and Geno
Alex Ovechkin
Center ice, the day after the game
View towards the open end of Heinz Field
King for a night
I believe that it has become almost customary that I post a shot from the Penguin game the day after, especially if I was there, which I was last night. It was a pivotal game, not in terms of the opponent, but in terms of the confidence level of the team, as the ranks have been depleted with injuries, including Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Chris Kunitz. However, we got some big time play from some big times players, especially Jordan Staal, pictured here, who got the game winner with 18 seconds left in overtime, and the Pens were victorious 2-1 over the Los Angeles Kings (ahhh, there’s the reference to the title).
I have been blessed in terms of the area of the country that I live in and the sporting events that I get to attend. As everyone probably knows by now, I am not a Steelers fan, however there is something to be said for the enthusiasm of their fans in the city. I can’t really relate to going to Heinz Field, the home of the Steelers, to watch a game, however I can hear what it gets like on TV as well as hear how incredible it is from friends and family. I obviously get to attend Penguin games, as my wife works for the team, and more nights than not the Consol Energy Center is rocking. It can be difficult for fans to get really pumped up and excited for the forty one home games a year, compared to the eight that the Steelers play, but when you win in dramatic fashion like we did last night, you swear the building is going to collapse.
With hockey, different than baseball and football when you can see a score coming, you never know if your team scored until that puck crosses the goal line. And when it does, it is so exciting to see 18,000 people all jump up and starting cheering and screaming and high fiving everyone around them (whoops, don’t spill that beer!). It is such a fast action sport, there is always excitement, big hits, breakaways, great saves by the goalies. If you haven’t been to a hockey game before, it certainly is worth the trip!
Aside from hockey, we have PNC Park. Now, we do have the worst baseball team of the past two decades, the Pirates, but that stadium is something to go watch a game in. You have a view of the entire skyline of Pittsburgh, and on fireworks night, the city lit up in all the different colors, it is an incredible view! I’ve also had the privilege of gong to several Penn State Nittany Lion football games. You want an electric atmosphere, go to one of those. You have almost 110,000 people in the same building, with upwards of 20,000 students, and half of the crowd has been drinking since five hours before game time. During Penn State home games, State College (where Penn State University resides) becomes the third largest city in Pennsylvania.
Ok, enough sports talk for today and on to the shot! I’ve already debuted the S95 on my flickr page and my blog, but this is the first HDR that I will have posted from it. I took this last night at the game from the Brewhouse, the best place to get food and drink at the new Consol Energy Center. It has a great view overlooking the city, and last night the lighting was perfect, a nice blue hour with a hint of sun on the horizon. The warm glow of the traffic lights looked great against the sky!
For the processing, this is a three exposure HDR that I put the camera on the ledge, set the self timer and snapped away. Put it through HDR Efex and then over the CS5. Added a warming filter to cool off the blue just a bit, added some contrast, recovered from highlights from the skyline as well as masked out a slight halo. Masked in one of the moving cars and lastly reduced the noise. I wasn’t thrilled about having the church in the corner of the frame and you can still see a bit of noise it the roof, but I still like the shot. For the picture of Jordan Staal, I adjusted the white balance (because shooting the arena is terrible lighting), decreased the overall saturation, reduced the red levels to give his face a more natural look and added a Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex.
That’s all for this week amigos and amigas, take care and enjoy your weekend.
Beach and bokeh
Well, today it is raining. At least it was raining when I was on my way to work. It was actually kind of weird, because we still have probably around five inches of snow on the ground, but it was absolutely pouring down rain. There was a bit of ice, nothing to make the commute too bad. I usually love winter, but this year has kind of been a pain. It snows six inches one day, then gets up to 33 and it all melts. Then it snows again two days later. Then it gets warm again. I can say that I am officially over winter and ready for spring. To me winter has two parts. The part leading up to Christmas and then the part where it snows (hopefully the two coincide). I know that winter doesn’t technically start until December 22nd, but to me, everything after Thanksgiving is winter. So now that Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone, it’s time for some snow! And some sustained snow!
I’ve titled this entry beach and bokeh, yet all I’ve done is talk about winter. Sorry. You know how you get off topic and start rambling? And I’m not talking about just talking with someone. Like when I had a conversation with a group of coworkers the other day, we started talking about an upcoming happy hour and then bachelor parties and then sushi and then German beer and it was like “How the hell did this happen?” I’m not just talking about that. I’m talking about when you’re sitting there at a red light waiting for it to change thinking about what to make for dinner when you get home. Then you see someone walking their talk and think about that dog you had when you were little. And how cute it was when she knocked over your Coke can at your birthday party when you were 8 all over your friend Tom. And then, “Man, I wonder what Tom’s doing now? I haven’t seen him in 15 years!” Then you start thinking about that girl that he used to date who was so annoying, she reminds you of a girl you work with who is equally as annoyi…oh wait, work, that’s right, I forgot to bring my laptop home to finish that presentation! My boss is gonna kill me! Hold on, the boss is still out of the office in Europe…then you think how you would love to vacation there, visit Italy, they probably have the best pasta in the world there! PASTA! That’s it. Pasta for dinner. While all of this was happening, you missed two green lights, almost drifted into the guy behind you and are getting strange looks by people walking by.
Look at me, rambling again. How about some pictures?
It’s a two for one special today! One is from our Jamaican honeymoon (beach) and one is from last Friday on a short photowalk (bokeh). For the Jamaican one, I was trying to get a minimalistic feel to, with just the lone raft on the beach and the whole people in the distance in the water, one of them being my wife. I took it mid trip there on the typically afternoon we had, stunning blue sky, a few wisps of clouds, and that sparkling water. It actually did rain one afternoon, but this pretty much epitomized the weather!
I put more work into this shot than I was originally planning to. It is just a single exposure that I tonemapped in HDR Efex. I kicked it over to Color Efex where I added a Tonal Contrast layer to the sad and water and left the sky alone. After that I added the Brilliance Filter from Color Efex to give it that warm glow. I also added a Selective Color layer to boost some of the greens in the water as well as striaghtened the horizon.
This shot is a bit more straightforward. It is a five exposure handheld HDR from Station Square in Pittsburgh. I’ve been trying to do more DoF shots, and I think that this one turned out rather nice! Processed the HDR in HDR Efex, added a Tonal Contrast filter and boosted the reds from the sunset!
If you haven’t had a chance yet, make sure you check out my HDR Efex Tutorial!
Enjoy your Tuesday everyone!
Meet and greet
So yesterday I had the chance to meet some of the Pittsburgh Penguins at an autograph session at one of our local malls. You donate to charity and then get to stand in line for a few hours to get some autographs. It’s the third year that I’ve done it, but it is still pretty cool! I know I’m not a little kid, but it’s hard still not to be a little star struck around these guys. I mean here there are, world class, Stanley Cup champion athletes, sitting right in front of you! You see people getting jerseys, pennants, flags, shirts, hats, pucks signed, which is all well and good, but for me, one of the most exciting parts is having them sign a picture that I took. Then I know that no one else has an autograph like mine! Just wanted to say thanks to the Pittsburgh Penguins for putting the event on and of course Pascal Dupuis, Eric Godard and Tyler Kennedy for taking the time out of their day to sit down and sign autographs for their fans!
Today’s shot is a bit different than my last couple weeks worth of posts, because it is not an HDR and it is not a busy New York scene (though it kinda still is); it’s me! This is a shot that my wife too on our last day in the city when we were on the Brooklyn Bridge. She has a nice eye for taking pictures and I keep trying to get her to come out shooting with me, but she won’t! One of these days I’ll get her out! Anyways, every once and a while she will ask for my S95 and say “Let me get a picture of you.” On this occasion I thought sure, why not, struck my best action pose, and this is what she got!
Now, just because she takes good pictures doesn’t mean she edits them. I wanted to do something a bit different with this one and not just a tonemapped single exposure HDR. So, I plopped it in Photoshop and the first thing I did was recover some of the blown out sky. And this point in the day it was a bit overcast, so the sky was a little “Eh”. Then I thought, “Why don’t I just do the whole thing in B&W?” So I did! Ran it through Nik’s Silver Efex, used a veryyyyyyyyyyyyy slight sepia color filter, a bit more structure and the vignette and was feeling pretty good about it! Back to CS5, blurred the background a bit as I was taking a movie before this shot and forgot to switch back to Aperture Priority and f2 (I think she just used Auto) to give a nice depth of field. Added a bit of grain for a film effect too. So there ya go! That’s me!
Look at that, you got to meet three professional hockey players and a very amateur photographer today…we’ll work on the greet another time!
Back with more ink!
Wow it’s been a long time! Three months? I may be the worst blogger ever. I know I say this every time (but I mean it this time!) I am going to start writing on this more. It’s not that I don’t like to, I always kinda start on something then just get sidetracked. Anyways, my plan is to at LEAST write one a week. At least post SOMETHING interested. That way people will look at more than just the tutorials, haha
So here goes.
Got another tattoo last week. That’s number three for me, and most likely more on the way. Anyone who has any amount of tattoos knows how addicting they are, and I wanted to schedule my third right after I got my second one! I’m not one for just getting one for the sake of having one. Let’s face it: these things are permanent. I didn’t want to get something that will have little to no meaning even a year from now! I wanted something that I am passionate about, something that I will care about forever.
My first tattoo is that of an Italian flag waving on my right arm, with the phrase “non ti dimentichero mai”, which means “I will never forget you” in Italian, along with the date 9-8-03, which is when my grandmother passed away. When I was very young, both my parents still worked, so I spent a lot of time at her house. Being the first grandson, I had a special place in her heart, and she had one in mine as well. (I had to flip the picture so you could read the writing, as this was taken in a mirror!)
The next one that I wanted to get was a depiction of our family crest that hung in my grandparents’ house. About six months later I returned to the tattoo parlor to have it drawn on the upper middle of my back.
Then, in August of this year, after over a two year hiatus from the needle, I finally saw what I wanted my next one to be. Like I’ve said before, I like to get tattoos that have personal meaning. We were on our honeymoon at Couples Sans Souci in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, floating on rafts in the Gulf of Mexico when it just hit me. The logo our resort was two intertwined palm trees, and I knew that was what I wanted. I also got our wedding date (8-7-10) inscribed in one of the trunks of the trees. Took the two of the new tattoo with my new Canon S95!
So those are my tattoos! I will more than likely get more in the future, just have to have that “Ah-HA!” moment again!
Thanks for the visits, and stop back soon! I will post more frequently, I promise!!!
HDR Exposed 